


Sole e Sale

by counterheist



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Manly Tears, brothers being brothers, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-16
Updated: 2011-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:50:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/counterheist/pseuds/counterheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been a century and a half and Romano doesn’t know how the time has passed. Neither does Veneziano, when it really comes down to it. But together they can figure something out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sole e Sale

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from _nil sole et sale utilius_ : nothing is more useful than sun and salt.

Romano steps under the cover of a Tabacchi doorway because it’s just begun to rain. In Rome, in his heart, the rain comes like his emotions: fast and furious, enduring for a few minutes before the city, he, swallows it up and lets it go. Contrary to popular belief, Romano can go for very long periods of time without losing his temper. If only the people who made him angry stopped insisting on being around him, then no one would ever see him like that.

Rough like the rain.

Half in the doorway he doesn’t shiver. The air is still warm, despite the rain, and the fan inside the store doesn’t reach his back. His people, clustered around the counter, only glance warily at him. He hasn’t visited this area in years; even though it’s his heart he doesn’t know it very well. It’s not his fault. It’s his grandfather’s, for leaving him, Romano, with such a mess. It’s his people’s fault, for changing. It’s every boss’s fault. ( _It’s Veneziano’s._ )

The fan doesn’t hit his back and his people, the citizens of his heart, don’t say hello. He’s not close enough for them to know why they should. To know who and what he is, that glimmer that humans are allowed to have only rarely. He doesn’t mind it. There are always other children to greet.

The rain stops, and Romano steps out on his way again. Slowly.

He walks past a market and finds that he doesn’t know every person browsing the booths. He used to. Romano remembers very clearly that he used to be able to name every person at this market by heart ( _that had been sometime in the 1800s. Time didn’t matter. It shouldn’t_ ). But now Senegal’s children stand next to the stalls, Veneziano’s meander in-between ( _wait, aren’t they his people too?_ ), Germany’s stumble through making purchases, and America’s stand every which way, _in_ the way, snapping photos of it all.

Romano doesn’t buy anything and frowns at the colors. Red ripe tomatoes, long white scarves, green cucumbers fresh from the vine… and orangepinkblackceruleanfuschia every color of the rainbow shines back and blinds him.

He turns a corner, just one, and suddenly there is no one. And the colors in his eyes are smooth again. Familiar. Tan stone, blue sky. Simple.

There is someone else on the road.

Romano doesn’t know how he didn’t notice him. But that is a lie. He had noticed him; he just hadn’t wanted to. “What are you doing here?” Romano can’t go anywhere, anymore, without Veneziano heading there too. He’s taken to shadowing Romano lately, as though they really were two young brothers playing and competing and tramping through the city as though it were theirs. The irony lies in the very stones of Rome ( _which **is** theirs, thank you_ ); the stones that used to belong only to Romano, the stones Veneziano now stands on too.

Veneziano blinks. “Me? How did you know I would be here?” He doesn’t let his surprise ( _at being caught, certainly_ ) catch him. Instead he opens his arms and smiles, the little bastard, he’s always one to push the situation around if he can. Romano doesn’t indulge him.

“Stop following me.”

No, instead of bending to the whim of his unwelcome shadow, Romano continues on his way, winding through his streets towards his river. There’s more noise along the road than he anticipated, and most of it is harsh and foreign to his ears. The rest of it is harsh and grating anyway, because Veneziano never did learn to shut up and go away when he wasn’t wanted.

“But Romano, you didn’t answer me.” Veneziano runs to catch up. He overtakes Romano easily. “Ve… is there something you wanted to say to me?”

“Why would there be?”

Veneziano throws his hands up, palms forward, in defense. “No reason!” He continues to walk backwards, babbling nonsense, and jumps out of the way before a particularly fast-moving car can turn him into another smear on the cobblestones. Romano would have pulled him aside. “If you want to follow me and not tell me about it and scowl at me and be more upset than you should be, considering when it is, then that’s fine with me, ve, it’s absolutely fine, I’m not curious one bit, not at all, not even a little, and I won’t ask you why you’ve—”

They hit the road that wraps close along the Tiber before Romano can hit his brother in the mouth, and Veneziano springs over it and puddles and pools of shade as soon as he can. From beneath the trees on the other side everything seems better than it was, and Romano allows his own stride to relax. He isn’t sure if the road is always this busy at this time of day, or if there are always so many tents set up below the embankment. Veneziano knows, surely. Romano tries to wheedle it out of him while they stroll.

That they walk side-by-side, together, calm, doesn’t cross Romano’s mind.

“My head feels strange, ve, can we stop?” And there he goes, ruining all of Romano’s plans again. And there it is: the space between them. When Veneziano doesn’t spot a bench nearby, he takes to leaning against the thick embankment walls, once white. A lonely cup balances on poems scrawled in cheap red paint to his right. To his left, Romano stands with his arms crossed. Veneziano closes his eyes in the breeze. “Much better.”

Romano has to agree, even though he dearly doesn’t want to. His head and his heart have both been feeling off, strange, wrong, _not the same_ , and all his aimless wandering hasn’t helped. Walking usually helps, except this time it didn’t, and the stubborn buzzing that refuses to leave Romano’s soul has had him on edge for hours. The breeze washes out the noise.

On the other side of the river, a family stops. They fiddle with their maps for a moment. Their littlest daughter, Lucia, twirls in the brand new dress her mother bought her before leaving home. Their oldest, Saveria, has her attention completely held by something in the sky, something in the direction of the Vittoriano. Romano has to squint at them, has to run through the genealogical branches twisting in his veins, his limbs, before he can place where they traveled from. He knows they had to wake up early, he knows Saveria had a fit when Lucia got to the bathroom before her, but it isn’t until Veneziano speaks that Romano can tell they arrived on the train from Naples two days before.

“I can’t tell either.” Veneziano hums and refuses to open his eyes and Romano will never understand him. “They smell like Florence, but not very much. What do you think, ve, because I can’t tell.”

Now that Veneziano mentions it, they do smell like Florence, and a little like Pienza besides, and Romano remembers that now, in this time, the train from Naples doesn’t mean anything. “Naples. It’s in everything about them, stupid.”

Veneziano breathes deep, “ve… if you say so,” and Romano can almost see his thoughts slide off his brother’s back, over the wall and deep down until the Tiber carries them away. Bastard shouldn’t ask if he doesn’t care. Romano should have known he wouldn’t care. “But I still think they smell like Florence! Perhaps,” the breeze picks up, just a notch more, “perhaps they’re from both.”

Romano can smell Florence on the wind, muted underneath the stones of Rome, but he can also smell a truce. “Maybe. What does it matter?”

“Matter?” Veneziano opens his eyes, finally, and stands. Romano can tell his aches have faded, because Romano’s aches have faded. And they have better things to do than stand around on the side of the road. “…ve, I forgot!”

He thinks it’s funny, so he laughs. Romano doesn’t, so he doesn’t. Across the river, Lucia spins in the sunlight.

Now that Veneziano has rested, because they’re always stopping for Veneziano aren’t they ( _ve, Romano, that’s not true…_ ), they continue walking along the river. Romano doesn’t know why he waited. Veneziano doesn’t either, but he keeps the thought to himself.

‘There’s too much I don’t know.’

They think it silently at the same time, and neither face betrays its wearer.

The trees, and the shade with them, disappear to make way for a bridge. Romano steps towards it first, he thinks, of course. Halfway across the bridge, Veneziano speaks again, pulling words from the box of profundity he probably keeps under his pillow and is only allowed to open on special occasions. It would explain most of the drivel the moron spouts.

“We’re very different than we used to be.”

This time, Romano stops. He smiles through breeze-swept hair at three women who pass by ( _Veneziano follows suit_ ). When they giggle their way out of sight, he chooses to stare at the island in the distance instead of at his brother’s face. “Are we? You’re still an idiot. I still have to deal with your idiocy.”

“That’s not what I mean, ve, and you know it!” Veneziano lets his face twist into the mockery of a scowl, it’s more of a pout, and Romano knows Veneziano can do better than that. “We’re not the same.”

“Yes. Yes we are.” Yes, yes you are.

The next topic Veneziano pulls out of the void between his ears startles Romano, even though it shouldn’t. It startles Veneziano a little bit as well, because he doesn’t dwell as much as Romano thinks he does. He definitely doesn’t dwell as much as he thinks _Romano_ does, which is a lot and often. “Do you think he would be proud of us now, if he could come back and visit?”

Romano’s mind screams ‘of you.’ His heart remains silent. “Don’t ask stupid questions about things that can’t happen anyway. If he came back, he’d only want everything to be his again, and it isn’t.”

Bathed in sunlight, they stare at the river flowing beneath their feet. They feel their people smile, and frown, and settle into the heat of the day. They smell the sweat of it all. Romano brushes the hair out of his eyes and doesn’t feel as old as he should. He doesn’t care.

“We’re us. This city is ours.” It’s strange, the moment the words dance past Romano’s throat something else whirls furiously into the rest of him, the most benign fury he’s ever felt, and tangles its claws in his core. The words feel just as right as the walk, and the market, and the salt stand had felt so wrong. Not wrong. It’s not a matter of right and wrong anymore, Romano can taste it. It’s a matter of difference, and… well shit, Veneziano is right. “And it’s mostly mine, so don’t go getting comfortable.”

Veneziano didn’t make his words clear enough before. So he doesn’t deserve to know they are true. Except. Except he hears it in Romano’s voice anyway, and in the breeze, and he’s disgustingly perceptive exactly when Romano wishes he wouldn’t be. “See! See, this is exactly what I meant; we’re different!” His arms burst open again, and this time Romano indulges him. If only to keep him quiet. “We’re different because we’re us. You said it.”

Romano can feel the flags whipping in the wind by the Vittoriano. He feels every turn, and it does something to his head, just like it must have to Veneziano, because his heart aches again. It doesn’t hurt; it aches, and despite every valiant effort, Romano can’t hold his salt inside of him.

He sniffles. “I-I’m getting something to eat.”

“Ve?”

And there they are; his tears on the wind. Romano can smell them. They’re sharp, they’re quite possibly drops of the Tyrrhenian, they’re running down his face. The ache holds, but it’s something Romano can manage, it’ll take more than a mystery to level _him_ , and at some point Romano moves his arms up and embraces Veneziano too.

He notices the wetness after a few emotional seconds. “Vene?”

“Roma?”

“That’s my _shirt_ you fucker!” They spring apart into a chase before Veneziano can explain that he was crying because he was really really happy, not sad, so don’t worry Romano, ve, don’t worry, I’m alright.

The chase devolves into a laughing sprinting race over the bridge and back into the warm streets before Romano can explain that he knows, _of course_ , he can feel it too, the point is I’m not made of money you idiot!

And above the once-white bridge, above the hopeful breeze and the deep red ages, above Italy, the sun shines down.

**Author's Note:**

> Buon compleanno Italia! To the characters and to the nation. ♥ I’m not quite sure what this gift is, but it’s a gift all the same! So take it ~~I’m not doing this for you~~!
> 
> Tabacchi: not just tobacco stands. More like ‘shit I need a bus ticket!... yes I see the sign!... what do you mean you can’t break a 20?????... infinite sadness…’ shops. Also used to be the place where you bought salt.
> 
> in his heart: his name is Romano, so in my head his heart is Rome, any past as the Kingdom of Two Sicilies aside.
> 
> Slowly: This is just me being whiny, pay it no mind.
> 
> The Vittoriano: [is this.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_Vittorio_Emanuele_II)
> 
> It was a struggle not to use the Italian names of the cities and river. I like those names better.
> 
>  **Also:** when does this take place? More-or-less-but-probably-not-exactly 17.3.2011. The brothers would probably have lots more to do than wandering around Rome being cranky.
> 
>  **Double also:** Spending two hours looking up quotes about salt in a language you don’t speak? _Priceless_. Anyway, there are some weird quotes in Italian that have the word salt in them. I liked ‘l'amore che non proviene dal cuore è come una minestra senza sale’/love that isn’t from the heart is like soup without salt, but I didn’t think that particularly fit the fic. There was also L'uomo senza vizi è insipido/a man without vices is tasteless, which I probably shouldn’t be surprised by but still.
> 
> Spending two hours looking up quotes about salt in Italian, only to end up using one in Latin? …yeah, I don’t even know. Why quotes? Secretly I love them. Why salt? Because. It works.
> 
>  **Triple Also:** this was finished on the fly by someone who is very far from being an authority on Italy, history or any combination of the two. If I got something wrong, tell me. Same goes for anything with the writing. Concrit away.  
> 


End file.
